


You Set Off a Dream in Me

by Cherry_B



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: A declaration of love in Spanish because I am unnecessary and out of control, General manga spoilers, M/M, Mild Language, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Haikyuu!! Chapter 402: Final Chapter: Challengers, Unreliable Narrator, let the man rest, time travel do over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherry_B/pseuds/Cherry_B
Summary: In which Oikawa is 41 and ready to retire. He's at the top of his game and ready to find a new challenge. Turns out his new challenge is pretty familiar. It's high school, round 2.It culminates three weeks after he woke up as a 16 year old, the coach asking him not to change for practice and instead go home. So Tooru does, he walks home alone.Laying in bed he wonders if he will ever find satisfaction in life. He almost feels as if Iwaizumi truly cursed him the first time around the night they had lost to Karasuno. The night Tooru had cracked open his ribs, pulled out his heart and laid out how grateful he was to everyone on the team for all their effort, for their perseverance, for their dedication and for their trust in him.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 26
Kudos: 96





	You Set Off a Dream in Me

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Second Move Advantage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/714293) by [shangrilove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shangrilove/pseuds/shangrilove). I read this fic 7 years ago and I still think about it, at least once or twice a month.
> 
> Title is from [Never Enough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQWZK5U233s) from The Greatest Showman.
> 
> Anything between "-example-" is spoken in English
> 
> Translations are at the end.
> 
> Edit: My links weren't working and no one said nothing lol

Tooru has everything he could ever want. He has four world championships between his club and his national team, an Olympic gold medal with Argentina and two silvers. He’s currently ranked the #1 setter in his league and his overall stats have him just beating out Tobio in the world rankings for the season, something he's pushed and scraped for, knowing it's his last chance to come out on top.

He is for all intents and purposes retiring at the top.

It doesn’t change the fact that he is alone, across the world from a country that’s no longer his home and all the people he had to leave behind to make all his dreams come true. 

He doesn’t regret it, not really. He’s lived out all his dreams, conquered all his rivals and goals. It’s just that as he lays alone in his king sized bed, still dressed in his slacks and button up shirt he wonders what it’d be like to come home in every sense of the word. Not to an empty house with a bed that’s too large and hallways that stretch from one empty room to the next.

There are things he misses, things he has missed for years. It doesn’t matter what new goal he sets after shattering the last milestone. It’s hard to really feel everything you’re meant to feel when you’re celebrating alone. There’s proof enough of that with tonight’s events. Because despite Club Atletico San Juan sparing no expense to throw the most lavish party for their retiring captain, Argentina’s retiring captain, Tooru had gone home alone, to a dark and empty house and a cold and lonely bed. 

At 41 Tooru knows he’s made a lot of choices that have led him to being one of the most decorated volleyball athletes in the world. He also knows he made a lot of choices that drove wedges, which became chasms, between him and a lot of old acquaintances. 

There are days when his knees ache and his shoulders seize up and he childishly wishes his old friend, Iwaizumi was around to knock some sense into him. The sporadic messages he gets, updates and well wishes from old teammates and comrades have dulled with time. It’s logical, they’ve all lived vastly different lives, in different countries and in different languages. They’ve moved beyond the high school circuit into real fleshed out lives. Each step taking them just a little bit further away from one another. They all make an effort, when there’s time. There’s just so little of it when they all have a million and one things clamoring for their attention.

Tooru wouldn’t say he regrets his decision to move halfway across the world in order to chase everything he’s ever wanted. After all he finally has it, a resounding win against all of the ghosts from his past. He has the adoration of an entire nation, their crest upon his chest, a crown of gold and silver placed atop his head and draped across his back is the fierce loyalty of his teammates. 

He has it all.

That’s what he repeats to himself until he finally dozes off as the first few rays of sunlight start to peak over the horizon.

He startles awake and he knows it wasn’t enough sleep. It’s something that hasn’t been an issue in close to two decades now. Still Tooru drags himself up from bed, he sits up and rubs at his face, keeping his eyes closed to avoid the morning sun.

Right, no practice, he’s retired now. He sighs and lets himself fall back, a dead weight drop that has him immediately grunting in pain as his head hits an unforgiving wooden floor.

“Ow!!” 

The back of his head throbs, pain shoots through his skull and dances behind his now wide open eyes. He rolls over and rubs where it hurts, hands pushing up against his thick wavy hair in an attempt at easing the sharp ache. “What the hell?”

He sits up and jolts. He isn’t in his room. His room is open and airy and faces the mountains to the east. It’s the end of spring so the temperature has just begun to rise, it should be warm. It should be too warm for Tooru who despite living most of his life in San Juan has never been able to fully adapt to the warmer year round temperatures. 

He stands quickly, makes his way to the nearest window and balks. He turns back around and shakes his head, the room he’s in suddenly more than a little familiar. The old out of date computer system sitting neatly on a low table with a volleyball innocently sitting next to the monitor, his old high school jacket laying across the back of the accompanying seat. The walls are the same off white and the mats on the floor are textured in a way no plush carpet or smooth tile flooring could ever compete with, not with Tooru’s memories.

“No way.” 

He stumbles past the futon on the floor and out into the hallway of his family home and despairs when he finally admits, he somehow, someway traveled back to Japan. 

“NO WAY!” He shouts, loud enough that his mother appears from her bedroom door and shakes her head at Tooru. 

“Tooru! Don’t shout, if you overslept you need to hurry up and get a move on not waste time being loud in the middle of the hallway.”

She stands in a simple brown dress, her hair swept up in an elegant bun, hair still a perfectly soft brown that matches Tooru’s own and it’s impossible. It is so very impossible because just two nights before she had video chatted with Tooru and her hair had been the same neat bob that she has sported for ten years now. Sleek and grey but so very stylish, a look Tooru and his sister had tried so hard to convince her was elegant and fitting and no, it didn’t make her look old at all. The grey was all sophistication and a proud badge to wear of a life well lived, unlike Tooru’s own grey gathering at his temples and sprinkled across his undercut, it suited her.

“Mom?”

“Well? Are you late? Iwaizumi-san won’t be very happy. He won’t wait and then you’ll have to walk alone to school. Hurry it up, Tooru.”

She turns back into her room and Tooru is left standing in some raggedy old pajamas from twenty plus years ago in a hallway of an old house from an entire lifetime ago with a mother who must be going through a midlife crisis dying her hair and wearing hair extensions.

“I hope she didn’t get botox, though I can’t imagine her make-up skills are good enough to make her wrinkles disappear that well.” 

Tooru doesn’t know how he got back home, why he’s going to his old school or when Iwaizumi is suppose to be picking him up so he decides the first order of business will be coffee, then a shower, maybe after that a quick LINE message to Iwaizumi so there aren’t any surprises. Whatever it is he did, he can’t imagine he did it sober and that can’t be good. The last thing he remembers is going back home after his retirement party, laying in bed almost 11 thousand miles away. This kind of trip would take over two days, it’d have to be planned and executed and surely he’d remember it. He wasn’t black out drunk when he left his party, in fact he was pretty sure he had passed out in his bed that morning. Even if he was drunk to the point of a complete lapse in his memory then he would have sobered up at some point in the last two days so how did this happen? 

He makes his way downstairs and frowns, his mother’s coffee machine is ancient though at least it’s clean. He makes a note to buy her a new one before he heads back to Argentina and starts to rummage around for some coffee beans or at the very least some pre-ground coffee.

“Tooru, what are you doing?”

He turns around and finds his mother staring at him, mouth set in a stern line and purse in hand.

“You're going to be late to morning practice, you’ll never make captain next year if you don’t show the rest of your team a little more respect. To think I almost believed you about Argentina. For a second I really thought maybe you were serious, here I was thinking you were finally planning ahead but it really was just a typical, dramatic reaction to that loss. Honestly Tooru.”

“What?”

“Enough fooling around, you aren’t staying home. Get ready and get your rear in gear. If I get a call from your school that you didn't go in today you and your father will have a very serious talk tonight.”

Tooru pales, the look seems to satisfy his mother who nods and hurries out, calling over her shoulder that she will return in time for dinner. Still Tooru stays rooted to his spot in front of the kitchen counter, clutching uselessly at the loose tea leaf bags he’s found. 

“What?” 

Why. 

Why would his mother even say that? He can’t understand, it makes him feel sick and suddenly he’s angry. Angrier than he’s been in years. He cannot believe his mother would bring up his dead father in such a cold and callous way. He throws the bag of leaves onto the counter and marches upstairs in disgust, stomping his feet on each step. He cannot stay. He refuses to stay. He has his own house and his own life and he doesn’t have to stay in this small town with his small minded mother. 

His mother who isn’t acting like herself at all he realizes as he reaches the top of the stairs. He slows his steps and he deflates, the anger leaving him. His shoulders slump in confusion as he enters his old room and he can’t find a suitcase, which he must have packed, he had to have brought something. He digs around his wardrobe and desk. 

Where is his passport?

He stands in the middle of his room, confused and hurt and slightly panicked because he’s stuck in Japan, he doesn’t know how he got there and there is a huge gap in his memory of how any of this even happened.

He opens his drawers again to search through them but all he finds are his old clothes from when he was younger. Digging around he is interrupted by the door bell. He glances around the room once more hoping to at least spot his phone before he gives up and he ambles downstairs as the doorbell rings again and again, increasing in frequency. 

Deeply annoyed at the rudeness of the guest and perturbed as he is by his predicament he throws open the door ready to tell whoever it is off and suddenly everything he was thinking flies out the window. Gone, replaced by a very strong buzzing in his ears, loud waves drowning everything out even as Tooru stares, completely baffled.

There at his door, bathed in morning light and looking so very, very young and irritated is Iwaizumi. Iwa-chan. 

“Oi are you listening to me, Oikawa? Why aren’t you dressed yet? We’re going to be late!”

Tooru can’t say anything, he can’t respond because everything is wrong, it’s all wrong.

“Oikawa?”

When they first make the move to the other side of the world they call each other everyday, text every chance they get but it’s hard to make it work when there’s a time difference, harder still when Tooru has gone pro and Iwaizumi is a full time student interning under an internationally renown physical trainer. It happens over the course of the third year, sometime between a summer training camp where Tooru has poor signal and Iwaizumi is invited along to shadow the recruitment of some collegiates to the United States Men’s Volleyball. There is a lag between their messages, the calls drop to once a week and by the time autumn comes around Tooru is thrust into a new season and Iwaizumi is now a Senior with twice the workload. 

They can’t make every day work but it’s ok because they’re still talking, sending each other pictures and morning greetings, updates on their annoying roommates or intensive workloads. It’s enough and it’s normal until one day Tooru is scrolling through his phone and he notices the last time he sent a message to Iwaizumi was two weeks before. He opens a new message, tries to think of where to start when his roommate pokes his head in and asks him about a change to their morning practice sessions. Tooru closes LINE and opts to text Iwaizumi that night. 

He forgets and it’s two days later when he reopens the app. He rereads the last messages from Iwaizumi, his own short response and a final message sent a few days after. It’s a link to a YouTube video about some new move that the Polar Bears were trying out. There had been no accompanying comment, no context. It makes something unfurl in Tooru’s chest, something slightly heavy and unfamiliar. For the first time in years Tooru is unsure what to say, how to word what’s been going on in a way that captures his everyday in a way that seems to actually matter. In the end he closes LINE and promises himself to think about it and write something of substance when he reopens it. 

It’s a while before they talk again, neither brings up that it’s been several weeks since they last exchanged words, even longer since they’ve actually spoken on the phone or seen one another via video chat. 

It’s normal, they’re both busy and getting busier. The weeks drag on and sometimes it takes a month before they can touch base again. By the time Iwaizumi has graduated their norm is so different to how it used to be but it doesn’t bother them, they’re still friends. When they do talk it’s like no time has passed, like they’re still 17 and walking the streets of Miyagi. Like they haven’t actually been apart at all. 

The truth is Tooru hasn’t seen Iwaizumi in years, literal years. Argentina has failed to qualify for the past two world championships, injuries and bad timing of new recruits has kept them from being all they’ve been before. It’s not like Japan hasn’t seen changes either. Shoyo had retired years ago to go pro in Beach Volleyball, Bokuto had been forced out because of bad knees just two seasons prior and Ushijima, Japan’s Biggest Canon, had become head coach for the U-17 squad after a shoulder injury that never truly healed. 

They’re good teams but they aren’t what they used to be and they haven’t faced each other in a while. Sometimes Iwaizumi will reach out with questions about a training regiment, a certain tricky serve, a technique that is floating around the Americas. Tooru always answers, it’s just it isn’t like it used to be. Nothing is like it used to be. Most people settle down after a while, get married, find a 9-5, athletes find fulfillment in getting trophies and medals. It just seems that for them it’s never been enough. They push and push and still have a long way to go before they reach the summit. 

Neither of them is even close to being satisfied except Tooru is retired now. He settled first and in a way it almost feels like he lost this ongoing, unlabeled thing they’ve had going since they were kids. Long before they graduated Aoba Johsai, prior to losing to Shiratorizawa the first time or even before they ran their first race up the hill behind his house. 

It’s just lately Tooru has been tired, age has caught up to him in the same way it caught up with many of his contemporaries. The way it caught up with his mentor Jose or his father. So he had quietly accepted that maybe it was time to move on, to find something new to hit until it broke. He had shattered the ceiling of his limitations years before, he needed to find something new to occupy his time and mind. Something to finally fill the hunger, that need that never seemed fully satisfied, never fully fed. 

Seeing Iwaizumi face to face for the first time in half a decade punches Tooru somewhere in his soft heart, pulling at all the words he always wishes he had said, all the dreams he had once had of them two of them taking on the world together. Something that died long before they lost to Karasuno, on the night Iwaizumi casually declared he’d be moving to California, leaving Tooru floundering. 

He’s frowning, a set of wrinkles between his brows that never really settled as he got older. Against all the odds Iwaizumi never developed the wrinkles Tooru had always predicted, instead he has deep laugh lines and crows feet that are a testament to how much he’s learned to relax and enjoy himself. Another on his growing lists of things Tooru has missed out on. 

But this Iwaizumi doesn’t have any of those lines etched on his face, he’s all smooth skin and slim toned muscles. He looks impossibly young, so much so that Tooru is rendered speechless. Completely enraptured by an Iwaizumi straight from his memories. 

“Are you sick?” He asks and Tooru opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Instead he reaches out and runs his fingers across the bridge of Iwaizumi’s perfectly straight nose. Impossible. A spike to the face his senior year of college had changed that. 

It’s impossible. 

“Hey! Don’t do that, what’s wrong with you?”

The familiar storm behind his eyes starts to pick up speed and Oikawa is hearing him but nothing is registering. He looks down at his own hands and it all feels as if he’s a million miles away, looking but not seeing. It’s like he’s not really here and maybe he’s not. Maybe he is dreaming. Dreaming of a past that feels like a hundred years ago with a mother that always pushed a bit too hard, not yet mellow out after losing not just one but two family members to time and distance. A past with an Iwaizumi that wasn’t on the opposite side of the net, monsters on all sides, guiding a setter that had lived the dream left behind in the ruins of Tooru’s past self. 

“You should get back inside if you aren’t feeling well. I can let the team know, I’ll get notes for you for today.”

“No,” he hears himself say. “I’ll get in trouble.”

“Oikawa don’t be stubborn, if you’re sick then you can’t go to school,” he says, clear agitation in his voice.

“I’m not sick,” he says, looking up at Iwaizumi. Taking in his wide eyes, the tense line of his shoulders and the Aoba Johsai uniform he has on.

Impossible and yet.

“I’ll go get ready,” Tooru says and with that he turns around and shuts the door behind him.

School is a beast, a two headed monster that makes Tooru wonder how he survived the first time around. His mind remembers the twenty-three years of professional experience he has but his body isn’t anywhere near the level it needs to be to make it count. He makes more mistakes than he’s used to and it takes a toll on him, enough to draw the attention of his seniors and the coach who sits him out. It’s enough to make a concerned Iwaizumi look over. Even then it still doesn’t pull Tooru out of the swirl of anxiety and disbelief. 

Because he’s done something that is impossible. Tooru has traveled through time. He knows it in the same way he knew that it truly was him staring back from his mirror in his mother’s house once he had gone to the restroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. It’s a fact, an implausible, unbelievable fact.

And yet here he is, 16 years old sitting on a bench of the gym at Aoba Johsai waiting for practice to end so he can scramble to figure out where to go next. It’s literally been more than half his life since he stepped foot at this school. He has no clue where his homeroom is, who his teachers are, if he had any homework last night. Hell he speaks a lot more Spanish now than Japanese and the mere thought of having to work on grammar worksheets has him breaking out into a cold sweat.

“Realmente estoy en el horno,” he mutters.1

He muddles through, somehow. It’s embarrassing, he makes a lot of mistakes and is confused half the time. No one knows what to make of it but the looks he gets from his teachers and the quiet concern from his classmates give him multiple opportunities to right himself as he fumbles through the day.

“If you weren’t feeling well you should have stayed home,” Iwaizumi scolds him during lunch. Matsukawa is picking at his lunch, seemingly uninterested in Tooru’s strange behavior. 

“You know I can’t just stay home, Iwa-chan.”

There’s a glance from Matsukawa, one that Tooru expertly avoids because if there is anything he’s perfected in his 41 years of life it’s the ability to maneuver a conversation away from a subject he’d rather avoid.

“I know it’s annoying but we have time, Oikawa. Next time. Next time we’ll get Shiratorizawa.”

Tooru blinks, looking up from his food, a slight itch starting to build up in the back of his mind.

“What?”

“Hah? What do you mean what? I said we’ll get them next time so stop your moping. We didn’t get them this time. It’s whatever, next time you’ll be captain and we’ll crush them and go to Nationals. That’s all there is to it.”

Tooru pulls out his phone, an ancient thing compared to his sleek phone of the future and stares at his lock screen. A picture of Takeru smiles back at him. A Takeru that is a child, his _nephew_ is still a _child_ here. He firmly ignores it and looks at the date at the top of his screen, his eyes widen ever so slightly as he recognizes the significance of it. 

It’s no wonder his mother had been exasperated with him, why his classmates and his teachers had been so patient, so understanding of his inability to immerse himself in class. Spring Qualifiers…his team had just come off an indisputable loss against Shiratorizawa and if he was remembering correctly he had just met with Jose not two days before. 

“Serious about Argentina huh?” He mumbles remembering his mother’s words.

“Are you still on about that?” Iwaizumi asks and Tooru looks up, surprised he heard him. Tooru stares at him, at the way his bottom lip is jutting out and his eyes are slightly narrowed. It’s Iwaizumi’s thinking face, he’s trying to get a read on Tooru, trying to decide if he’s serious or not and it strikes a nerve. 

He had gone across the world and proved a thousand points, triumphed against all his rivals, pulled medals from the hands of geniuses and struggled through a lifetime of trying to be accepted by another country, proving that he was loyal. He learned not just one but two new languages to be able to connect with his teammates in San Juan and none of it matters because right now, right here Tooru is sitting in a high school classroom and none of it has happened. No one knows of his struggles, his losses and his ultimate victories. No one knows of everything he’s accomplished, all they know are their doubts of him. 

Tooru schools his face into something bland and unaffected even as he feels his blood boil at being questioned. He’s so sick of being doubted. 

“And are you still serious about California, Iwaizumi?” He asks, tilting his head upwards so he looks down on his best friend. His best friend whose eyes widen, soba noodles slipping from his chopsticks. 

Matsukawa looks between them, mouth set in an unhappy line even as his eyes swim with confusion.

“I-what? I never-never said anything about that.”

“But that’s what you’re planning right? You want to go to California to study sports science.”

“California?” A new voice asks. Matsukawa looks up and greets Hanamaki with unease as Tooru and Iwaizumi continue their stare off. A new tense silence blanketing their group. 

“I…thought about it,” Iwaizumi says at length, brows now furrowed in displeasure and nerves. “They have a really good program in Irvine. There’s a person that works there, he wrote this book I’ve been reading. It’s a really good book.”

“So you want to go to the United States because of a book you’re reading?” Hanamaki asks, incredulity lacing his voice.

“No! I mean sort of, it’s not like that. I’ve just been thinking about maybe applying. They don’t ask for a lot more than what I'm already doing for applications here you know? They just want an English proficiency test. I can do that.”

“You’re shit at English,” Matsukawa says.

Iwaizumi scowls.

“I can do it. My grade in English is pretty good this year and I’ve been looking at some college prep courses that would help me with it. I’m not dumb.”

“No one said you were, Iwa-chan. We know what class you’re in.”

Iwaizumi glares at Tooru, half confused and half still angry. Hanamaki looks like he wants to say something else but Matsukawa kills that line of conversation with a question about the troublesome first year that has stopped showing up to practice and the rest of lunch is taken up by talk about the volleyball club.

When the bell rings for class the four of them part with half hearted waves, Tooru’s ire having ebbed leaving behind a cold drip down his back about the implications of having changed something so crucial. It’s too early, much too early for Iwaizumi to start to prep for international studies. He doesn’t make up his mind about it until the New Years or at least that is what he told Tooru the first time around. Dropped that bomb right as they started their final year of high school but maybe…despite it being only half way into their second year of high school Iwaizumi had accepted Tooru’s words far too easily, expressed a half formed plan for how to get to California too quickly. It is possible that maybe Iwaizumi had lied the first time around. It’s possible Tooru has changed nothing at all. 

The first time around Iwaizumi tells Tooru at the beginning of their third year. Everyone has pretty much made up their mind about where they want to apply and what they want to do after graduation. Tooru though, hesitates, while everyone else is busy studying and laying out plans and backup plans Tooru quiets down, shuts out a lot of distractions and curls further into himself. He sits down to brainstorm his potential path to Olympic Gold. Having spoken with Jose he knows he has a difficult path ahead of him, something he has to come to terms with and that’s something that takes him more than a minute.

What’s more at the end of the V-League season Jose announces his departure from the Falcons and Tooru knows he has a decision to make. Does he follow Jose to Argentina or does he stay in Japan and rise through the V-league ranks? 

The choice is obvious, so glaringly obvious. He knows what he has to do but still he hesitates. He waits because there are a couple of other consequences to that decision that he wants to consider but as he sits and waits he’s thrown a curveball when Iwaizumi invites him over to study, a rare night off from cram school and practice. Tooru accepts, thinking Iwaizumi plans on a nice relaxing evening. It’s everything but when they’re sitting on his bed together shuffling through school work and textbooks and Iwaizumi, casual as if he’s just mentioned what he plans to have for dinner, states that he’s leaving Japan. 

“I need to really do well in this portion of the prep class. It’s the English portion and I need to excel so I can pass the English proficiency test for the UC application process.”

“The what?” Tooru had asked, nose scrunched in confusion.

“The UC Irvine application.” 

Here Iwaizumi quiets, mouth pursed slightly.

“I’m going to apply to a program for a school out in California. It’s an excellent opportunity to enroll in a top of the line sports science program and if I get lucky I might even meet someone that’s very well regarded in that field.”

“California?” Tooru asks, slightly breathless at the thought that Iwaizumi plans to leave for another country. “As in the United States, California? Like Hollywood?”

Iwaizumi’s face crumples in disdain. 

“Not Hollywood or well I guess it’s close by, Irvine is somewhat close to Los Angeles. Not that distance means much anyway, right? You’re moving to Argentina. Gonna follow Blanco right?”

Tooru stares at Iwaizumi, who just dropped the biggest bomb of their entire lives, as he continues to shuffle through his worksheets. His mind obviously already thousands of miles away while Tooru clutches at some unacknowledged dream of them maybe, still, playing together past high school. 

Oh, he thinks. That’s probably why, it’s why he hadn’t decided yet. Why he had given himself an out, a chance to still say never mind. I don’t need to go yet, I have my entire life to go overseas, to study under Jose, to learn from the best to be the best. Once I’m good enough, once I’m there. 

“Yeah, of course you are. You’ve been talking about it since the last Spring Qualifiers. So I got to thinking about it you know? Why can’t I go big or go home too? So I started looking at all these programs and I saw this one out in Irvine and this guy who is part of it, Takashi Utsui and I thought, now there’s an opportunity. I’m gonna kick your ass so hard over there, Oikawa. Gonna show you who’s boss, man.”

“But first,” Iwaizumi finally looks up, acknowledging Tooru’s presence for the first time since he opened his mouth to break Tooru’s heart. “We’re going to beat Shiratorizawa, go to Nationals and show everyone what Aoba Johsai is made of, right?”

He grins, a dry smirk with a promise of unmatchable strength, a dark shadow over his eyes that screams for revenge, a chance to get even. 

“And once it’s over and we go our separate ways you better prepare yourself, Oikawa because I intend to come after your ass next.”

“Ye-ah,” Tooru says, voice breaking in the middle. He clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah of course, we’re going to win and you’re welcome to try to beat me later on, Iwa-chan. But don’t go making promises you can’t keep. It’s me that’s going to be on top in the end so you’re the one who better watch out.”

And that’s how Tooru ends up cementing his plans.

“Che, que mala leche tengo,2” Tooru grumbles, a week later. He’s still struggling in school and the sympathy from his teachers has waned. The rest of his classmates don’t seem to care much anymore but Iwaizumi has been fluctuating between concerned and annoyed, much like his actual mother. 

There isn’t much time, he knows. His second year will be ending in a few months, he will be named captain and he will have two more chances to beat Shiratorizawa and then it’s off to Argentina once more. This time he feels ready for it, even more excited for it. Because he misses the warm breezes of San Juan, the chants of his fans and the weight of the crest he will one day carry. The blue that will run through his veins will be painted on the cheeks of his current teammates and the cry of his people will be in glorious Spanish and it’s like it can’t arrive fast enough.

First he has to think back to those last few high school games and apply his experience from his professional career and several wins against Japan and especially Tobio and Ushiwaka to make sure he takes his team to Nationals for the first time in two lifetimes.

It causes a lot of friction in practice because Tooru doesn’t need the third years for his plan but they don’t all immediately leave the team. A good chunk of them stick around, running practice as if their presence is warranted. It’s not and Tooru doesn’t know how to tell them to get lost without getting kicked off the team. Still he knows he can use all the practice time he can with his actual continuing teammates to hone them and their skills for their upcoming tournaments. Not much he can do without Kunimi, Mad Dog or Kindaichi in terms of team attacks but there is plenty of room for growth. Hanamaki’s serve, Matsukawa’s read block, Iwaizumi’s cross spike. 

He has so much to play with and the third years that refuse to leave hamper him, smother the team and get under Oikawa’s skin until even the first years start to give him a wide berth. 

“What is your problem?” Iwaizumi asks him as they walk home. 

“Hm?” Tooru asks, mind half still on the court, planning out a synchro attack that might throw Karasuno off sooner this first time around.

“Oi, I asked what your problem is, you’re antagonizing the third years. If you don’t knock it off I don’t think coach will let us choose you as team captain.”

Tooru stumbles at his words, tripping over his own feet, head whipping to look at Iwaizumi in disbelief.

“Excuse me?”

“Is this about Nationals? You've been acting weird all week.”

“What do you mean?” Tooru asks even though he knows what Iwaizumi is referring to, how could he not? He knows he’s been acting off, he’s been back for exactly one week but an entire lifetime doesn’t go away just because he’s returned to a very familiar past. He can’t let go of everything that was stripped from him by happenstance or fate, no matter the how or why the truth is every victory he earned through blood, sweat and tears was ripped from him, stolen. 

He’s anxious and impatient and confused and angry. He’s been trying but he’s not happy, not really content. Yes, it appears he gets to live another lifetime to rectify any missed opportunities but Tooru has already proved everything once. He might have a chance to redo them and while he loves the idea that he might do it even better somehow, he is also angry that he has to prove himself once more. He has to change people’s mind once again. 

He loves volleyball and like Iwaizumi once said, he will never get enough of it but what he has had enough of is people’s doubt of him, the lack of chances that people give him. 

He knows now what he didn’t know the first time he was 16 years old. Oikawa Tooru must forge his own path, create his own opportunities because doors won’t be swung open for him. No one will invite him to join a V-league team, no scouts will come for him in Argentina, Japan will overlook him because at home there will be multiple geniuses running around dominating the home turf and Tooru will be a virtual unknown upon graduating high school. At 19 years old Kageyama will snatch up the only open setter position at the time and Oikawa will be left adrift, lost and alone. 

And from that crushing defeat, from that ultimate rejection Tooru will rise. He will discard his old self and reimagine his victory, repaint it in Sky Blue, and sing his song in Spanish. He will crush everyone in front of him, snatching victory after victory with a resounding result. Unquestionable, irrefutable, undeniable. Oikawa Tooru of Argentina will rise shedding his old self, he will be reborn. Proving not only to himself but the world at large that he is just as good.

Oikawa Tooru is no genius and he is not one of the lucky ones but at the end of the day he won and was loved.

This Oikawa Tooru has not yet had the chance to prove any of that and it hurts, it hurts because Tooru genuinely loved his life, everything he had accomplished and done. Every person he had met and worked with, his house in San Juan, his friends on the national team. His culture and food and new found confidence. He had been living a dream, having won everything and being recognized for all his hard work. 

“Lo extraño. Lo extraño todo,3” he mumbles, a headache starting to pulse behind his left eye.

“What are you even saying, is that Klingon again?” Iwaizumi scoffs. 

Tooru is so offended, on so many fronts that all he can do is stare at Iwaizumi in disgust.

“No, I-I just want us to win, Iwa-chan and frankly we won’t have the third years next year so I don’t see the point of them hanging around.”

Iwaizumi stops walking, a deep frown clouding his face. 

“Are you really that arrogant? So what if they won’t be around, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. They were on this team for three years, Oikawa.”

“And we were on it for two now, so what?”

Iwaizumi throws his hands in the air, letting out a sound of deep frustration. 

“I cannot believe you, honestly did you not understand me when I said a team of six-“

“I understood you, Iwa-chan. I live by that but I don’t have anything to learn from 17 year olds. There’s not much they can teach me.”

Iwaizumi stares at him, shock clear in the way his mouth slackens and his lips part open, his eyes round and glassy. He makes two half aborted hand gestures and stays rooted to his spot on the sidewalk, clearly speechless.

“I know you don’t understand me now, Iwa-chan. This isn’t about arrogance. I am telling you a fact, they have absolutely nothing to teach me.”

As the silence stretches into uncomfortable Tooru plays with the idea of explaining his situation to Iwaizumi but before he can get another word out his friend walks past him, shouldering him as he goes. Even as Tooru calls after him Iwaizumi doesn’t turn around or deign him with a response. 

Things don’t improve much after that. Practice has the rest of the team treating Tooru like a pariah, Iwaizumi is short with him during breaks and lunches, his mother continues to make small comments that grate on Tooru. The first night Tooru’s father comes through the front door Tooru breaks down and cries, alarming his parents and making for a very awkward family dinner. It only gets more uncomfortable as Tooru continues to try and hug his father each passing day. His mother questions his intentions, his father comments that Tooru is acting too much like a child. Both fault his recent volleyball loss. 

Tooru feels so alone.

He just wants to make things better this time around, easier for his teammates, clear to his father that he loves him, less stressful for Iwaizumi who always feels as if he has to clean up Tooru’s messes.

He has all these plans and ideas to make his high school career better, more successful but none of it is going the way he planned. 

It culminates three weeks after he woke up as a 16 year old, the coach asking him not to change for practice and instead go home. So Tooru does, he walks home alone.

Laying in bed he wonders if he will ever find satisfaction in life. He almost feels as if Iwaizumi truly cursed him the first time around the night they had lost to Karasuno. The night Tooru had cracked open his ribs, pulled out his heart and laid out how grateful he was to everyone on the team for all their effort, for their perseverance, for their dedication and for their trust in him.

He knows he can make things better but no one is letting him, no one trusts him, no one believes in him and it’s killing him. It’s destroying what self love and self confidence he had built up from the ground up the second he had stepped foot on Argentine land. What that place did for him, he could never pay back enough and yet three weeks is all it takes for Tooru to feel like a kid again. While he physically may be one he knows mentally and emotionally he isn’t the same person he was before. 

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. 

Ok. Things are not working out. Things are hard. That’s normal. Things are never going to be easy if you plan to follow a dream, they are especially not going to be easy if your name is Oikawa Tooru.

What now?

Does he still have to lose to Shiratorizawa, to Karasuno? Does that really affect much in the long run? Tooru was happy at 41, he had everything he wanted and he had shattered all ideas of who Tooru was and what he could achieve. Is there really a point in trying to change things? He is happy with his true life, this weird reset doesn’t have to mean much of anything. 

Iwaizumi is going to California, Tooru is going to Argentina. Hanamaki is moving to Tokyo and his father will die in eight years in his sleep from natural causes. 

And still at the end of the day Tooru was good, things had turned out well enough. It had all turned out ok. 

He lets out a shaky breath and steels himself for the next day, to accept a present that isn’t what he wants but one he could accept if it allows him to claw his way back to where he really wants to be. He will bow and ask for forgiveness, he will be more patient with his mother and press for less from his father. He will help Iwaizumi get into a program that he will have gotten into one way or another, no matter what Tooru of a past time or this time wants. 

He pushes through with his plan, the new year comes and goes and soon it’s spring. The third years graduate, Tooru and Iwaizumi are named captain and vice captain and yet again everyone immerses themselves in university applications. This time there is no hesitation on Tooru’s end. He knows very clearly what his path will be. 

He still works his team, polishes them like a well oiled machine but he refrains from introducing new tricks and techniques from his past life. He doesn’t ask the impossible from them and he doesn’t gently pull it from them either. 

They play their practice game against Karasuno, they win this time and Tooru wonders why that is if he isn’t actively trying to change things. As the team leaves he stares at Kageyama who turns and stares straight back, his eyes then slide down to Shoyo who startles and dives to hide behind the Karasuno vice captain. Tooru smiles, remembering the life lesson the younger man had taught him on another continent another lifetime ago. 

“Relax, chibi-chan,” he says as he approaches. “First rule to remember is: Volleyball is fun.”

Shoyo stares at him in wonder while Tobio tenses.

“We’ll see you guys soon,” he says walking past them towards an awaiting Iwaizumi who watches him with a guarded expression.

“Don’t go around antagonizing people, Crappykawa.”

“Iwa-chan!” He screeches, no longer offended by the ridiculous nicknames his old friend bestows on him. He smiles as he catches up to him. “You are so awful.”

He laughs as Iwaizumi searches his face, for what exactly? Tooru doesn’t know. He just knows he’s happy to see old friends once again so he allows himself to bask in the reunion.

And of course they beat Karasuno when they do match up at the Inter-High Qualifiers. Almost ten months after waking up as a teenager again Oikawa stares down at Tobio and Shoyo. Something inside his chest clenches knowing this won’t be the last time. If things work out like they should this will only be the beginning. He turns, his hand gliding across the back of his teammates who are waiting for him. 

Out in the hallway Tooru takes a second to brace himself for what’s coming. He grips the back of his ace’s neck, anchoring him. Iwaizumi turns to look at him, a question in his eyes answered only by an apology in Tooru’s.

They play Shiratorizawa and lose. Tooru’s never been more sorry in the whole of his two lifetimes.

“It’s ok, might be better this way you know? More poetic or something probably,” Iwaizumi tells him that night as they sit on his bed. Tooru shifts, he should be heading home soon but Iwaizumi looks crushed, lost and Tooru doesn’t have the heart to leave his friend in such a shape. 

_You could have changed this, you could have protected him_ , a voice whispers, malicious and truthful. Tooru shakes with the want of it all but it can’t be, not if he wants his old life back.

He looks at Iwaizumi, some of the hurt from the afternoon lingers but shadows of the man he will become are gathering around him.

In the future these losses will mold him, shape him, give him the courage to pick himself back up and charge at Tooru time and time again until Japan finally blasts through the court of knights, royalty and calvary Tooru will build around himself. 

And yet as Iwaizumi shuts his eyes to keep his tears at bay Tooru wants more than anything to give him the world. To tell him they will have their chance to play together once more. That this isn’t the end of the road even though it is the beginning of it. Next time they will lose again and Iwaizumi will retire at the young age of 18, having played with only one setter his whole life. He and Tooru will pack their bags and move away and they’ll talk every day until it's once a week then once a month and then once in a while. 

Neither will marry but both will live rich and fulfilling lives with victories and losses and hardship and despite it all, or maybe because of it they will be happy. It will all work out, maybe not like they imagined at one point but it will all be ok.

It’s just in the face of his best friend breaking down in the privacy of his own bedroom, clutching at Tooru’s shirt, burying his face in his shoulder, Tooru can admit maybe it wasn’t enough. To him at least it never felt like it was enough. The satisfaction he thought he’d get from beating down Tobio and Wakatoshi was always fleeting, he’d marvel at their growth, gleam from them what he needed to further improve himself and his team. It was different than he thought it would be. His triumphs never sated him.

As Iwaizumi allows himself to express his disappointment through warm and heavy tears Tooru thinks maybe this is why, maybe it’s because despite all his wins and all the accolades it wasn’t _their_ victories, it wasn’t their shared success. Because at the end of the day they weren’t standing next to one another and that’s why it was never enough. 

Despite sharing a world stage it wasn’t the smaller court of a northern Japanese city that gave them the win they had craved for literal years. The closure of winning as a duo against their own feared giant.

Iwaizumi’s tears taper off and Tooru thinks maybe things don’t have to be exactly the same. Maybe Tooru can give him this. 

As he rubs Iwaizumi’s back and feels his own eyes begin to sting he wonders; can’t things change, even if just a little? Tooru can always go to Argentina with a little more fanfare, with one small victory under his belt. Things won’t be drastically different. If it’s one small change then it won’t kill his new old dream. 

Maybe for once in his life Tooru can be there for Iwaizumi the way Iwaizumi was always there for him.

The first time around when Tooru announces his decision to follow Jose Blanco to Argentina the third years are unsurprised, it’s been a rumor for over a year ever since Tooru had made that trip to speak with the DT of the Red Falcons. The same cannot be said for his underclassmen who respond with skepticism. It seems no one believes him. Kyotani scoffs and Watari raises a single eyebrow in amusement. 

Coach watches from the sidelines as the team murmurs their surprise at Tooru’s decision, one of the first years questioning the destination. Most dismissing it as too far fetched to be true.

Iwaizumi steps in and calls for order, he expresses a sincere wish for Tooru’s success, supporting Tooru and chastising the team in one single short speech.

“I know Blanco will be an excellent mentor and you will learn a lot from him. Let’s all do our best to win this last tournament so we can finally show Japan all that Aoba Johsai is capable of, your captain and I believe in all of you!”

With that the team gets fired up, cheering for the upcoming tournament, cheering for their soon to depart upperclassmen, cheering for Aoba Johsai.

Tooru turns to give thanks to Iwaizumi and finds that he's already looking back at him. Watching him with steady eyes and the softest expression Tooru has seen in years. He feels a rush of blood sweep across his body, leaving him feeling slightly lightheaded and his limbs buzzing.

“Ready, captain?” Iwaizumi asks. 

‘Always,’ Tooru thinks. ‘As long as you’re by my side, I’m always ready.’

Tooru makes some drastic changes to their training regiment the very next day. It has the team swearing up and down and the coach raising a brow at him but after walking through his goals and expectations with Iwaizumi they both create a new training regiment and add new exercises. It’s fun, reminiscent of what they used to do sometimes on the off seasons. Just some quick video chats, random ‘what if’ scenarios about things they’d try out if they had different kinds of players on their teams.

_‘If you had that one outside hitter from the Canadian team, you know which one, what kind of set would you do for him?’_

_‘Ok, pop quiz! Your middle blocker, the Romanian one that jumps a lot, has a strained shoulder, best warm up stretches before doing a light workout?’_

_‘Hinata long set, best Brazilian to make it count!’_

Just a month of the new training and already Tooru can see a drastic change in his teammates, the elegant responses to his slightly more difficult sets, the strength and precision increasing in their spikes, their confidence blooming.

It’s a second opportunity he never once believed he’d get, something he had discarded when this whole mess started because he was just so desperate to make it all end. It’s beautiful and warms his chest as he makes his way home at night, Iwaizumi at his side, hope blossoming in the palms of his hands. 

It’s so very different to what he once had and he wonders, not for the first time, if maybe this is why he was sent back. To get some closure on something he truly believed he had long let go of decades ago.

“You have a very crappy expression on your face right now,” Iwaizumi says, his voice light. It causes Tooru’s fingers to tingle, a soft heat slowly stroking to life in his sternum. 

Iwaizumi looks and sounds a million years away from the boy who was crying in his bedroom but weeks ago. The weight of that loss removed from his shoulders. 

‘He’s happy,’ Tooru thinks, a soft smile twitching his lips up. 

‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen it in person but I bet I could make him happy for the rest of his life if I wasn’t five thousand miles away.’

Tooru stumbles slightly, a horrifying heat flushing up from his chest up his neck and converging on his face.

“Careful, stupid. Why are you so red? What the hell?” Iwaizumi says, his tone sharp. 

“I-uh. I wasn’t watching where I was going,” Tooru says, jaw clenched in embarrassment and eyes fluttering from one of Iwaizumi’s shoulders to the other.

“Obviously. What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Tooru lies. 

“Yeah of course, sure.”

“It’s just, it’s end of term and practice has been a little more demanding. We should hurry and get home, Iwa-chan. Growing boys like ourselves need our sleep,” Tooru says, pushing Iwaizumi along, eager to get to the safety of his own home and his room and to relieve himself of the heat that spreads from where his hands are resting on Iwaizumi’s shoulders.

“I don’t even understand where this whole sleep well, eat well thing came from but I’m not going to question it because whatever caused that to get through that thick skull of yours must have been a miracle.”

“Ah yes, a miracle. A weird mystical time traveling miracle.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Let’s hurry,” Tooru says, urging them through the quiet streets of their neighborhood, willing the night air to help cool his warm face.

Summer comes and with it a long forgotten memory of a young love, she tracks down Tooru one day after classes end. Letter in hand she approaches him with a confident stride but this time Tooru turns down the confession, intent on focusing on making it to Nationals. In the end he doesn’t think it matters much as theirs had been a short lived love affair.

Despite the marked improvement he’s seeing Tooru continues to push his team, they have one chance left and he knows that somewhere out in Tokyo Karasuno is thinking the same thing. Their third years just as hungry as he is for this to count. A few weeks ago he would have just let it happen, they had rightfully won it before. He knows in the long run, the deep long run it won’t matter to his career. He will still come out swinging on top many years later. So maybe...

But then Iwaizumi will swing down on a set, spike a ball so loud it thunders in their gym. He will spin, clench his fist and pump it in exhilaration and Tooru knows he can’t let it go, he can’t let them win because this isn’t about him. It’s not about Oikawa Tooru and his career, it’s not about old wounds and petty rivalries. This is about a boy who cried on his shoulder and looked at him with all the trust in the world in a crowded smelly hallway at Sendai City Gym and how Tooru has already let him down once, twice, innumerable times before and he just can’t do it again. He mustn’t. 

So he pushes and stretches and polishes every single one of his weapons so he can give every single one of his boys a memory to cherish for the rest of their lives, one shared moment. A moment that he hopes will never end in their hearts, each one holding their breath to make it last just a second more. 

And when he’s approached by Tobio this time around he makes sure the picture Takeru takes is crystal clear, because Tooru is many things but there’s a petty streak in him a mile wide and no amount of wins or trophies can compete with a hilarious picture of his junior bowing to him. Even then he makes sure to impart useful information to Tobio, after all, Shoyo benefits from it just as much as his junior does. They’ll all win in the end for it.

The team continues to practice, plans for post graduation are made, Iwaizumi crams for his proficiency test and Tooru watches as with every stroke of his pen and every new English word memorized Iwaizumi slips from his future once again.

The night before the team training camp Iwaizumi comes over to spend the night. A simple necessity to hash out last minute plans they haven’t finalized. Everyone has been busy, everyone but Tooru who has put off his planning for Argentina to make sure he fulfills his private promise to Iwaizumi.

“Alright, I think that’s enough for tonight. I’m beat.”

Iwaizumi stretches, his shirt shifting and stretching across his chest and shoulders. A sensuous roll that catches Tooru’s eye for a second too long. He viciously stomps down on that old train of thought.

“You finalize any of your plans for after graduation yet?” Iwaizumi asks, sleep slurring his words as he drags himself over to his futon. 

“Mm?” Tooru asks, searching through YouTube for more clips of a certain Polish team. He’s tired too but not quite as tired as Iwaizumi. Yes he’s outgrown certain nasty old habits but they have been rearing their heads up again with a body that’s slightly move forgiving in it’s young age. He’s found it easier than he expected to slip back every once in a while.

“I said, did you figure out where exactly you’re heading after graduation yet? You sure Jose is still going to be at CASJ this time next year, his contract was just for a season right?” 

Tooru startles at the name of his old mentor, a man from a different lifetime, intertwined with his past and now once again future.

“Oh, uh no, I guess, not yet.”

Iwaizumi frowns at that, sitting up on his futon to face Tooru. 

“Why are you lagging on this? You can’t push it off till the last minute, Oikawa. This takes careful planning, you can’t just run off without any contacts, nowhere to stay. Hell if you don’t know the language well enough how are you even going to do basics like grocery shopping?”

Tooru stares, caught off guard and suddenly his mouth opens, without his permission.

“¿Quién dice que no se hablar Español?4-Or English for that matter- ?”

Iwaizumi’s eyes widen slightly. He pauses his movements for a second and seems to think over his words carefully, the wrinkle between his brows making a reappearance.

“Your English was always worse than mine but these past few months, when I’ve been studying it almost felt like you were tutoring me in it. When did you get fluent in it? What’s more, when did you get fluent in Spanish, that’s what it is right? You’re speaking Spanish. I swear I’ve never seen you study either of them and suddenly you’re spouting out full sentences in both languages, what the hell, Oikawa?”

Tooru shrugs, turning his phone’s screen off, feeling drained. He goes to lie down but Iwaizumi reaches out and grabs his arm, stopping him from ignoring the question.

The silence between them drags on just enough to make Tooru uncomfortable and then,

“You think you’ve been real slick lately but it’s not adding up, Oikawa. It’s like after we lost to Shiratorizawa at the Inter-High qualifiers your priorities shifted. You haven’t once talked about going to Argentina, you’ve rejected every single confession you’ve received and you’ve been almost obsessive about our training, our sleeping and eating habits. I swear I have no idea what’s going on in your head. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on. Are you…are you not planning on going to Argentina anymore?”

The question slaps Tooru across the face, instantly waking him. He physically recoils from Iwaizumi’s touch as if scalded.

“Of course I am, I have to. I need to go back,” he states, his eyes wide and voice higher than normal. Something about what Iwaizumi is saying is pushing all the wrong buttons and Tooru is clutching at his own chest hoping to alleviate the strange pressure there.

“Go back? Oikawa you’ve never been there before.”

“Iwaizumi, drop it. Of course I’m still planning on going, I said I would. That’s my chance. If I can’t get through here I’ll be able to learn from the best there,” he says and he knows his voice must be ringing all sorts of alarms in Iwaizumi’s head, his tone is reedy with desperation even to his own ears.

“Oikawa. I told you before, you can make it here just fine. You’ll be ok here. If you’ve changed your mind, if you want to stay it’s ok. Once you’re in the college circuit everyone will see what a great setter you are and I’ll be able to brag to everyone I know that we once played together.” 

Iwaizumi’s voice is soft but his tone is firm, his eyes sparkle with true warmth and it’s absolutely devastating Tooru who doesn’t want to hear it, can’t bear to listen to Iwaizumi talk about leaving him behind once again.

“Iwa please,” he pleads. “I told you I can’t stay here.”

Iwaizumi scoots closer, his face softening as does his voice as if he’s trying to keep himself from scaring Tooru off, as if he ever could.

“You don’t have to stay at home, Tooru. You don’t have to stay in Japan if you don’t want to but you also don’t have to go to Argentina right away, if you want to wait a year or so. Wasn’t that what you had planned, originally anyway? You can do whatever you want, whatever you choose you’ll be amazing.”

“No, I-I don’t want- I just want to sleep. Can we not talk about this anymore?” Tooru pleads, eyeing Iwaizumi in the dim light of his room, the only source of light being the lamp on his desk. It bathes him in a soft yellow glow that makes the shadows in the room stand out that much more. It makes Iwaizumi look older, much older, something closer to the man that Tooru last saw five years ago. A past that’s looming over the horizon, blanketing his future in loneliness.

The pressure in his chest squeezes tighter as Iwaizumi studies his face for a few seconds.

“Ok, alright. We can drop this. For now,” Iwaizumi says scooting away, tucking himself into the guest futon.

He falls asleep soon after but Tooru has no such luck. For the first time in a very, very long time Tooru has a hard time falling asleep, instead ruminating over Iwaizumi’s words in his mind over and over again. 

Does he want to go back to Argentina? 

If he’s being honest with himself he hadn’t thought of anything else for months, for almost a year it’s all he’s thought about. Getting back to his old life, his old team, his past self. The Oikawa Tooru of Argentina had everything. 

And still, the old doubt creeps in again, Tooru had not been satisfied. He never was, it seemed like no matter what he did it was never enough. He turns to look over at Iwaizumi’s sleeping form. Did the older him have the same doubts, he wonders. Did Iwaizumi ever lay in bed after a game and wonder if that’s how a resounding victory was supposed to feel? 

Does he want to go back to Argentina when the first time didn’t bring him complete satisfaction? He knows he loves it there, he knows it made him immeasurably happy to be there. The people, the country, the culture. It did him a world of good for his confidence and self respect, his self love. But if he hadn’t been 100% satisfied does he want to go back? Would it make sense to relive that life? He had everything but at the end of that fateful night months ago Tooru had come home to a cold and empty home and nothing more than trophies and medals to call his own. He was fine, it was good but was it enough? 

What does he truly want?

He’s not sure and the thought scares him. 

Why hadn’t it been enough, he wonders as his eyes begin to droop watching Iwaizumi’s back rising and falling with each sleep deep breath he takes. The even rhythm finally calming Tooru’s mind and body enough to finally rest.

Those thoughts haunt him through the next day at training camp. While the team is in movement he’s focused but the second they break for water or a breather Iwaizumi’s question pops up again.

_“Are you not planning on going to Argentina anymore?”_

Tooru turns to watch Iwaizumi demonstrate his straight to Kindaichi and Tooru asks himself again.

‘What do I want?’

‘I want to win,’ he thinks as the team is called together again to continue. ‘I want to keep playing. I want to be on the court.’

“Chance ball! Yahaba get it!” One of the third years on the other team calls out. The ball is sent back to their side and Tooru stretches out his arms, hands ready.

He pushes the ball with his fingers, a soft arc that lands directly in front of his ace, a solid spike that blows through the block that Matsukawa and Hanamaki set up. Haijime’s palm meets the ball at the perfect angle, the perfect height, the sound of it so loud it splits the air.

‘I want to set to you forever,’ he thinks and when Iwaizumi turns to celebrate his kill with him, Tooru's face is anything but joyful.

He can’t sleep that night, not with Iwaizumi laying next to him in a room they’re sharing with half of the third years on the team. 

He tries not to think about it too much but it’s hard when his mind is vacillating between celebrating that Iwaizumi is at his side, like he should be and mourning his impending departure. 

‘I want to set to you forever but I can’t do that when I’m five thousand miles away from you. When you and I are on opposite sides of the court. I can’t do that if I follow my previous path.’

“Are you not planning on going to Argentina anymore?” Iwaizumi asks him again in his mind.

‘I’m not sure,’ he responds. ‘I’m not sure.’

Iwaizumi corners him on day three. 

“You’re distracted. Is this about what I said the other night? Because if it is, then forget it. We need to concentrate on the upcoming tourney. Keep it together, Oikawa. We can think about the future later, stay here in the now.”

Tooru lets out the smallest whine, muffled by his own hands, dragging them down his face.

“Iwa please.”

“What?”

“I just need some time to think some stuff over. I know I’m not being that helpful right now, I know we’re literally around the corner from facing Ushijima and Shoyo and Tobio again but I just need a moment ok.”

Iwaizumi grunts, making a vague hand gesture. 

“When this training camp ends we are going to talk,” he says before he turns and stomps away.

“And they call me the dramatic one,” Tooru laments.

True to his word Iwaizumi doesn’t hound him anymore, he works just a little bit harder to cover for any of Tooru’s slips, takes the lead when Tooru hesitates a second too long to decide on something. It’s a productive training camp free of any travel related announcements this time around. It comes to an end a few days later and the team disperses, excited for the upcoming tournament.

“Iwa, can we talk tomorrow?” Tooru asks as soon as the last back of their teammates disappears around the corner.

Iwaizumi glances at Tooru, hands full of equipment and training gear, his eyes tired.

“Yeah, ok,” he says. He goes ahead first leaving Tooru alone at school to think over his decision.

Tooru is 21 when he is asked by Jose to consider joining the Argentine National Team. His first instinct is to call Iwaizumi. Despite it being the middle of the night for him, Iwaizumi answers. There’s an unfamiliar silence that greets him when Tooru freezes up, as if Iwaizumi knows he needs time to get the first words out.

“Iwa-They, they called up Tobio.”

Iwaizumi to his credit lets him cry without interrupting, lets him get it all out first, allowing Tooru to gather himself up so he can continue.

“They gave him the open setter spot.” 

“I heard,” he says after only the slightest pause. The line stays quiet then, just their breathing, one labored and the other soft and even. “Oikawa, you’re still a great setter you know. I meant what I said.”

Oikawa takes a shuddering breath, something thin that crackles towards the end. 

“No matter the team,” Iwaizumi cuts into Tooru’s chest with his words. “You will always be great and I will always be able to boast about you.”

More tears spring, unbidden, from Tooru’s eyes and he can’t stop them or the cut off sobs that choke out of him. He didn’t want to have to resort to this. He had hoped there would be a spot for him on the Japanese team but he knows that if not there then come hell or high water there will be one on the Argentinian team. He had just always hoped he would be enough to edge out Tobio for that upcoming spot. 

“I know we talked about this, Iwa. We always knew I might have to do this but am I doing the right thing here? Should I really…should I really apply for citizenship here? It almost feels like giving up.”

“It’s not like that, Oikawa. If you feel like that then you really shouldn’t go through with it. Representing a country means giving it your all and if you cannot commit to that, if you are hesitating then you shouldn’t do it. It may not be where you were born but it’s where you are cultivating your career, your new life. They deserve your everything, your 110%. Can you do that or not?”

Tooru continues to swallow down his tears, swallowing past the ball in his throat and the heaviness in his heart.

“Oikawa?” Iwaizumi asks at length.

“You know what it would mean, Hajime,” Tooru says, his brittle words laced with bitterness. “If I do this, then I can never play for Japan. If I don’t do this, then I wait for a chance that will probably never come. Miya is shortlisted and they didn’t even come see me in person, Iwa. They sent a third party to record. I-I want to play, Iwa. I don’t want to wait on a maybe never.”

“You know,” Iwaizumi starts, cutting through Tooru’s tirade, “No one would hold it against you. You’d be the crazy bastard that moved across the world to start a new life, a fantastic career in a country where you don’t speak the language and joined a national team that adopted your ass. It’d be admirable and everyone, not just me, would be cheering you on. So if you want my honest opinion, say yes.”

Tooru freezes in his kitchen, the early morning light hitting his face and blinding him momentarily because of course, Iwa-chan knew what the call was really about. Tooru didn’t even have to say it.

“They asked you right? How could they not. So say yes, Tooru.”

Tooru starts the naturalization process that same week and is called up as a pinch server for the upcoming friendlies as soon as his citizenship is announced. He never looks back.

The thing about the first time Tooru follows his dreams is that they take up his every living moment. He doesn’t have time for regret, there wasn’t anything to regret. 

As he wanders the streets around Aoba Johsai all the things he had missed suddenly come to the forefront of what his life was like. The rose tinted glasses come off and his old pains are exactly as Tooru remembers them. 

He had been miserably alone in San Juan. Surrounded by fans and friends and a lover here and there but no one ever reached down far enough to soothe those nights he’d spend out on his veranda, a cold drink in hand, a blank LINE message open on his phone in the other. 

The years had trickled by and with each new season someone was getting married, buying a house, starting a new career, ending an old one. There were birthdays that he never made it to, graduations he couldn’t attend. Lives that simply went on and people who one by one slowly and without meaning to disappeared from his life. 

Life had passed Tooru by without him even noticing, blinded as he was by a million spotlights, a thousand new records to break. Each just as exciting as the last. One day he had stood at a gala thrown by the most important people of Volleyball in Argentina, saying goodbye to the country that had sheltered him, given him a chance to grow and shine. A country that loved him like a mother, holding him close at first and then opening her arms to let him bloom.

He had held an award that named him best setter but this time when he turned to look to his side he had found polite applause and pride in the eyes of men and women that had seen the best of him, never the worst. Not Iwaizumi, not his mother or sister, not his nephew or an old junior of his. Not the people that had dispersed years before, spreading their wings to all corners of the globe. 

There were many things Tooru had missed, he’d been missing them for years. He just had a habit of burying those thoughts before they could bury him. Now standing in the old streets of his youth, streets that are now more than memories he feels each of these things deeply.

He finally ambles home, the lights all off except for the one in his parents’ bedroom. 

The loss of his father had been a big hit to his mother, for Tooru as well but more for the woman who had spent a great chunk of her life with the man. Tooru of that time had been 11 thousand miles away, in the middle of a championship tournament, one they didn't actually end up winning when he got the news. Dead, gone in his sleep. 

Tooru had sat down on the bench in the locker room, his teammates looking at him with concern but not quite reaching out, not understanding what was being said in a foreign language but able to pick up on his tone and body language well enough.

When the call ended and the game was over he went home, accompanied by the team vice captain, because he couldn’t very well drive in his state. He had entered his home alone, walked the dark hallways by the light of his phone and sat on his bed in his sweats and an old club t-shirt. Sometime around midnight the messages began to flow in. Hanamaki, Matsukawa, Shinji, Kindaichi, Kunimi, Yahaba, even Shoyo, Tobio and Wakatoshi. 

Hajime’s message came just two hours later, a soft ping that preambled a call.

Tooru had picked up immediately.

“Tooru,” he whispered and that’s all it took for Tooru to finally cry.

“Iwa,” he bawled, “Iwa, I wasn’t there. Dad’s gone and mom woke up next to him like that and I wasn’t there.”

He cried for the loss of his father, cried for the missed time they never had and never would have, cried for his mother who was now elderly and alone in a house that was much too big for a single older woman. He cried and cried until his swollen eyes burned and his chest ached with the need for air and still he cried some more. Hajime had muttered soft words in his ear, his small voice clear as thunder through the speaker. His words had been warm and held Tooru through mountains and rivers and miles of separation. 

God he missed him. He missed him as if he was a limb that had been cut off years before and still the phantom pains had not diminished. 

“Tooru, I’m sorry,” he said in the end and Tooru buried his head between his pillows seeking any sort of physical comfort. One that Hajime’s voice alone could not provide.

In the end the truth is simple.

Argentina, France, Canada, Morocco, Australia. Pick a country, it will never be enough. If Iwaizumi isn’t by his side, if Tooru isn’t standing next to him then no matter how many victories he nicks on his bedpost, how many medals he brings home to his mansion, no matter how many times he’s the last one standing on the court it will never be enough. 

And that’s his final decision. As much as it pains him it also liberates him. He cannot return to Argentina, he knows exactly what he needs to do so with that in mind he opens the gate to his home and makes his way inside.

When Hajime arrives the next day Tooru’s parents have been gone for hours. Alone in his childhood home he had taken to reminiscing like an old man, wandering the halls and enjoying the small touches that will be removed in the not so distant future. He smiles fondly at all the pictures his mother has hung up and makes plans for a family dinner while he waits. There are just so many things that matter, so many things he can hold onto this time around.

By the time Hajime arrives Tooru has made them lunch, something simple but nutritious and Hajime stares at it with suspicion. 

“I’m not trying to poison you, Iwa-chan. Just try it, ok? I swear it’s edible. I’ve actually been making my parents their lunches.”

Hajime blinks in surprise and reaches out to take a small sip of the miso soup, he pauses.

“It’s not salty,” he says, clearly impressed. Tooru snorts.

“Yeah, I know.” 

He shakes his head, a tiny uptick of the corners of his mouth as he watches Hajime enjoy his lunch. It’s a sight he hopes to see again and again, forever really, if Hajime lets him.

“So, is this about what were talking about right before camp?” Hajime asks once they’ve both finished. 

“Yes, it is,” Tooru says, rinsing out their dishes. He keeps his back to Hajime.

Busy hands, calm mind. Hajime watches him move around the sink without saying a word, ever patient, so understanding.

“I’m not going to Argentina anymore,” Tooru says without preamble. Hajime makes a weird sort of wheezing sound and Tooru turns to look at him in alarm.

“O-oh, ok, so then what team are you going to aim for?” Hajime asks, jumping to an erroneous, if logical conclusion.

“Hajime, I’m not staying in Japan,” Tooru states, he enunciates his words as clearly as possible. Hajime frowns, looking at Tooru with clear confusion fogging up his eyes.

“I don’t understand, are you then going for somewhere else like Italy?”

Tooru stares at Hajime who stares right back. His eyes are glued to the lightest brush of red at the tips of Hajime’s ears, the sight of it grabs onto Tooru’s heart and squeezes. 

“I’m going to California,” he hears himself respond in a voice that is a lot more even than he had anticipated. The thundering of his heart that follows swallows Hajime’s initial response. 

“Tooru.”

“Hajime,” he says back.

“Tooru what are you doing, why…why California?”

Isn’t it obvious, Tooru thinks. Isn’t it clear by now? 

Hajime stares at him, boring holes into his face, his face wrinkled in such a fashion that Tooru isn’t sure if he’s confused or angry or embarrassed.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I’m following you, he wants to say. Let me follow you, let me be by your side. Let me. Let me.

“I’m looking to do something different, Iwa-chan. You aren’t the only one who can pack up and start somewhere new.”

“Yes, I know. That was always the plan, you idiot. You always said you wanted to travel the world, break into the foreign leagues. You’ve been on about Argentina for over a year now, Tooru. I don’t understand. What happened?”

You, me, a lifetime of being apart.

Instead he sighs, eyes fluttering shut, his hands splayed out on the counter behind him.

“I just want-“

“No, no we aren’t doing this. No games, Oikawa. Moving across the world isn’t something to do on a whim,” Hajime practically shouts, banging his fist on the small kitchen table.

“This isn’t a whim, Iwa-chan. I’ve thought about this seriously. This is what I want to do!” 

“Since when? Tell me why. You’re not…following me, are you?” Hajime asks. His nostrils are flaring, his hands are shaking and his entire body is one tense coil ready to spring.

Tooru pushes forward anyway because he has no other choice, he can’t let this go any other way.

“So what if I am?” He asks, his voice is thin and airy. It doesn’t have the weight behind it that Tooru wishes it had.

At that Hajime looks crushed, he deflates, his shoulders drop, his mouth swings open. His eyes, his perpetually lively eyes glaze over with something that Tooru refuses to acknowledge.

“Don’t do that, Oikawa. Don’t put that on me.”

“What?” 

“Don’t follow me, don’t make a decision you’ll regret.”

“I won’t,” Tooru says, dropping all pretenses now. He wants Hajime to hear how honest he’s being right now. He needs Hajime to accept that this is truly 100% what Tooru desires above all else. “Hajime I could never.”

“Tooru, please listen to yourself. I know you’re worried, maybe even scared but next week we’ll beat Shiratorizawa and then you won’t have any regrets here but if you move to California, if you follow me instead of your dream, instead of Jose Blanco then you will have regrets. And I won’t be the reason for that. I won’t be the reason you wake up twenty years from now in a house you hate, in a bed you wish you weren’t in, living a life you don’t want. You need to do this for yourself, you need to follow your own path. Do not follow me just because it’s the safe thing to do.”

Tooru stares at his best friend, at the man he’s loved since he was a child, a man he’s loved as a teenager, as a full fledged adult and never before has he been more sure about anything than in this exact moment. He knows in his heart of hearts that this is the right choice, the correct path to take. 

And Hajime, oh Hajime. Always worried about him, always looking out for him. Always, always thinking of Tooru and what will make Tooru happy. Tooru loves him so much it almost hurts to breathe.

“Going to California isn’t the safe thing to do, Hajime. Nothing is ever guaranteed. I just know my place is at your side. It’s where I belong, I want to do this. This is the right thing for me to do, the right place to go. Where you go I want to follow. Don’t you get it?”

Hajime stands up, his chair falling behind him as he lets out a loud noise of frustration. 

“Damn it, Oikawa. Listen to me, for once in your stubborn life, listen to me. Why are you doing this? Think about it. Don’t talk, just think about it. Why do you want to do this? What do you hope to get out of this, are you going because that’s where you really want to go or because I’ll be there? Because then you won’t be alone? This isn’t like you at all. You’re brave, you tackle anything in your way. Don’t you always say if you’re going to hit something, hit it until it breaks? Well this is that moment when you’ve got to hit this wall until it breaks, Tooru. This is _your_ moment.”

“Hajime, this is what I want,” Tooru repeats, his voice even, trying to convey his commitment to his previous declaration. His intent to follow Hajime wherever he goes.

“No, damn it. Oikawa. Please! Just be honest, be honest! No more games, ask yourself, why do you want to do this. Tell the truth!”

He sounds so angry, he’s pacing the kitchen, glaring at Tooru. The disbelief is clear in the tense line of his shoulders, the cracking of his voice, the loud and heavy weight of his steps. He doesn’t believe Tooru.

“The truth?” Tooru asks.

“Yes! The truth! For once, push past these mind games, be honest, tell the truth. To yourself more than anyone, Oikawa.”

Tooru startles, cut deeply by Hajime’s words. His eyes sting as he clutches at his own chest, anything, anything at all to make the empty feeling in his gut disappear at Hajime calling his declaration of love a mind game.

“You want the truth?” He whispers.

“Just be honest, Oikawa,” Hajime says, eyes flashing dark.

“You want me to be honest. Ok, I’ll be honest. I’ll be honest,” Tooru repeats, his voice increasing in volume as the rejection settles into his bones, crushing them alongside all the dreams he’s ever had of them standing at one another’s side. 

“Te amo, te adoro. Me quemo de ganas de estar contigo. He vivido dos vidas y nunca nadie se acercado a lo que siento por ti. Si el diablo o el mismísimo Dio me da otra oportunidad te querré una tercera, cuarta y quinta vez. Cuantas veces me lo pidan. -I would not suffer for it,- es un privilegio poder sentir esto por ti. Te amo, Hajime. Te amo! Ya viví una vida sin ti, no lo quiero volver hacer. Por favor, no me pidas eso. Todo menos eso.”5

The first of his tears force their way out even as he clenches his eyes trying to stop them, hoping to shut out everything that’s happening. This isn’t what he wanted but things have never been easy for him so why did he expect this to go any differently. 

“Oikawa,” Hajime starts, confused and alarmed but mostly worried. He reaches out for Tooru who crumples into his arms. 

“Hajime please believe me. Please believe me,” he stutters between shuddering breaths as his tears continue to roll out. He hides his face against Hajime’s chest, trying to stop himself from shaking, trying to even out his breathing, trying to make the tears stop. 

“I do, I do. I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t understand what you said but I know you’re serious. I know you’re being honest. I’m sorry,” He says, gently combing his fingers through Tooru’s thick hair. “I’m sorry.” 

They stand there long after Tooru’s tears have stopped and dried on his cheeks. 

The day flows a lot slower after that, Tooru is exhausted by the emotional rollercoaster of the day. Hajime is consumed by the thought that Tooru intends to follow where he leads, a small but insistent new seed plants itself in his mind that Tooru’s words sound almost like a confession. 

Much later when they part that night Tooru asks if Hajime is really ok with Tooru going to California as well. After all, he’s willing to follow wherever it is Hajime goes but he won’t force it either. There is no immediate answer, instead Hajime studies his face as they both stand in the genkan of Tooru’s childhood home. This close Tooru can almost count Hajime’s eyelashes, dark and delicate over intense olive eyes. His eyes are not terribly unreadable, time and distance has never been able to dull Tooru’s ability to feel out his friend. A safety net that gave Tooru the courage to bare his heart in the end and trust Hajime to catch it, hold it close and care for it in return. 

“Why don’t we talk some more about this after we beat Shiratorizawa next week?” Hajime says after a minute. 

“Ok,” Tooru says, his mind already on the court, ready to give Hajime the victory he deserves. “Ok.” 

**Weeks Later:**

“Was that a confession, that time, before the tournament?” Hajime asks. 

Tooru looks up from his laptop, legs splayed out in front of him taking up most of Hajime’s bed. They’re both in the middle of filling out their college applications having already applied to take their English proficiency tests. 

“Huh?” 

“Don’t. You know what I’m talking about. What you said, in Spanish…was it, you know?” Hajime starts, his voice dying off in clear embarrassment. His neck flushing a violent red that reaches the tip of his nose and ears. 

‘Cute,’ Tooru thinks. 

“Ah, yeah,” he answers with a lopsided smile. 

Hajime sputters, he reaches over removing the laptop from Tooru’s lap. He places it to the side, scoots closer and stares intently at Tooru. 

“Next time say what you want to say in Japanese,” he says, the blush on his face getting impossibly redder. 

“-What about in English? We really should practice it more if we’re moving to the United States,-” Tooru states with a cheeky twinkle in his eye that has Hajime huffing. 

“Really, Tooru,” he says, crossing his arms as if to stave off the embarrassment of having confirmed Tooru’s feelings for him. “So what are you going to do if you do follow me?” 

Tooru rolls his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly in fondness. 

“Not if, Iwa-chan. I _am_ going to California with you,” he says, pointing to the laptop now pushed far to the side. 

Hajime shakes his head, equally as unsuccessful in hiding his own smile. 

“Ok, what are you going to do when you get to California?” 

Tooru pretends to think about it, tilts his head to the side and lets his eyes droop slightly. His mind actually does wander for a minute, back to the warm temperatures of South America, the fresh salty breeze of the Atlantic Ocean and the sharpness of warm sand beneath his feet. 

“You know what, Iwa-chan? I’ve been thinking for a while now, it might be nice if I started over from the beginning.” 

Tooru brings a hand up to his chin and brushes his thumb over his bottom lip, eyes focused on a place way past Iwaizumi’s shoulder. 

“And what does that mean?” Hajime asks, brows pinched together. 

“It’s just, I love volleyball of course. I could play it in every single lifetime and never get bored of it but I was thinking of shaking it up after we graduate. I was thinking of maybe trying my hand at beach volleyball.” 

Hajime looks stunned, eyes wide and lips just barely parted. 

“What?” 

Tooru laughs, throws his head back and closes his eyes to savor the memories of a bright Brazilian beach from another lifetime, a young man who reminded him of why he played in the first place. 

_‘Volleyball is fun!’_

“Yeah,” Hajime says, drawing Tooru’s attention to him once again. “Yeah, I can see that. You’d definitely rule that court too.” 

He smiles and rests his hand, palm up, on the bed between them. Tooru, weak, foolish, devoted Tooru can do nothing but let his own cover it. Sliding his fingers between Hajime’s squeezing their palms together, gentle but firm. A promise of a brand new life to spend together. A hand to hold on to and never let go of again. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I'm really in trouble/I'm in big trouble Back
> 
> 2\. What bad luck I have/What crappy luck of mine Back
> 
> 3\. I miss it. I miss everything. Back
> 
> 4\. Who says I don't know how to speak Spanish? Back
> 
> 5\. I love you, I adore you. I'm burning up with desire to be with you. I've lived two lives and no one has ever even come close to what I feel for you. If the devil or God himself gives me another chance I will love you a third, fourth and fifth time. However many times they ask it of me. -I would not suffer for it,- it is a privilege to feel what I feel for you. I love you, Hajime. I love you! I've already lived one life without you, I don't want to do it again. Please don't ask that of me. Anything but that. Back


End file.
